Redemption
by Lena7623
Summary: Third in the 'Second in Command' series. Loki and Phoenix have declared a truce with the Avengers as they have decided they want a safe place to raise their child. This world is not as safe as they would imagine, though. Rated T for language, some violence, and some sexual situations. I am debating between T & M. If I need to change it I will.
1. Chapter 1 Pregnancy Hormones

Chapter One: Pregnancy Hormones 

Bruce Banner had been in a deep sleep when he first heard the taps on his window. He had first assumed that maybe it was a pigeon. They were all over the city, after all. When the taps got harder and more insistent, he pushed himself out of bed, thinking that he would just open the window and shoo the bird away so that he could sleep.

However, when he put his glasses on to see what was at the window, he quickly realized that it was not a _what_ but a _who_.

Of all the people he might expect knocking at his window, the woman known as Phoenix wasn't one of them.

It had been a few weeks since her and Loki had dropped in and announced that they were having a kid. Fury had amazingly been willing to agree to the truce, as long as they consented to being watched, along with giving help whenever the Avengers needed it.

While they had agreed to stop trying to take over the world and refrain from kidnapping any of them out of spite, neither of them had completely given up on being annoyances. Everyone found things hidden in weird places around Stark Tower that belonged to them, and one night everyone had realized that all of the books on history in the home were stolen, only to return a few nights later with _corrections_. Thor insisted that they weren't in his brother's handwriting, which left only Phoenix as the culprit. Despite not liking that someone had written in a few of his personal books, Bruce couldn't help but enjoy reading facts from a person who had been around to see things like the rise and fall of Rome.

Banner opened the window, wind whipping in and blowing through his hair. They were many floors up off the ground, so the wind was fierce. "How did you even get up here?" he asked.

"Never mind that," she said, pushing past him and making her way inside of the room. "I figured it would be nicer of me to try knocking rather than just breaking in or something." Bruce realized that she couldn't teleport on her own. He knew that she had abilities in magic as well, but, other than almost unconsciously conjuring fire, he hadn't seen any of her abilities. "I need a doctor."

"I'm...not exactly the kind of doctor you should be going to," Bruce told her, realizing what it was that she was wanting.

She shot him a glare. "Now exactly what sort of doctor should I be going to? A human one that doesn't know what I am? What sort of baby I am carrying?" He couldn't help but notice that she spoke a lot like Thor and Loki now, even though her own speech was more peppered with modern colloquialisms. Then again, she likely spent all of her time around Loki. Why wouldn't she start talking like him?

Bruce sighed and nodded. "Alright, point taken," he grumbled. He wanted to argue that he wasn't that kind of doctor, but he had helped plenty of pregnant women while in India and during his other travels while he had hid from the American government. At least here, he had real equipment.

He shut the window and motioned for her to follow, leading her toward an elevator and then down to the medical wing that they kept here. People ended up banged up enough that it was a necessity to have it here. Right now Bruce was just grateful that they also had sonograms.

"Are you telling me that you haven't seen a doctor since you've been pregnant?" he asked as he motioned for her to sit on one of the beds in the medical wing.

She shook her head, nibbling on her bottom lip. He couldn't help but realize that she looked horribly nervous, like something had been on her mind for a while.

"What's on your mind?" he asked, motioning for her to raise her shirt.

She did, exposing her swollen stomach. "I want to see if it looks normal," she admitted to him after a moment's hesitation.

"Normal by what standards?" Bruce asked her. He pulled out a tube of jelly, squirting some on her stomach as he waited for the machine to fully warm up.

She sighed. "I am not sure of that myself. I think I will know once I see it, though."

He simply nodded. When the sonogram machine was ready, he turned the screen toward her, pressing the tool down on her stomach so that pictures could be seen.

"Do you have to press so hard?" she grumbled, obviously trying not to shift on the bed.

"If I don't press hard, we won't be able to see anything," he told her. Shortly the images within her appeared. "The baby looks normal, ten fingers, ten toes, well formed..."

"What color is it?" she asked.

He paused, looking directly at her. "What?"

She lifted up a hand and he watched as it turned jet black, as if burnt. Apparently, she wasn't that different from Loki in that she had a different form as well. "What color is it? Black? Blue? Purple? I need to know."

As he watched her hand change back, he realized what she meant by normal. "This isn't going to show that," he told her. "She'll likely have two forms like you and Loki do."  
"She then?" she asked, and he nodded. "I wonder if she'll be fire or frost...I am not sure what will happen when the two mix like this."

Bruce shrugged, handing her a towel and pulling away from her stomach so that she could clean up. "Only time will tell, but, so far, things look as normal as can be with a child born from gods."

She smiled, seemingly reassured. Once cleaned up and with her shirt back down, she did something completely unexpected. She jumped off the table and hugged him. She was apparently _quite_ relieved.

He went stiff in her arms before awkwardly patting her on the back. "Thank you," she said when she pulled back. "You're going to be my doctor from now on."

She turned from him and started walking toward the elevator, presumably to let herself out of the building. "I don't even get a choice in this, do I?" he asked, more to himself than to her.

"Nope!" she called out over her shoulder to him.

OoOoOoOo

During the next month of her pregnancy, Phoenix dropped by Stark Tower at least weekly for a doctor's appointment with Bruce, and had been hanging around a little bit more each time afterward. Tony and Clint were still uncomfortable around her, although even that was starting to ebb. Everyone had to admit that she really did seem to be sticking with the idea that, if she was going to have a child, she wanted to raise it on a normal and functioning world.

One day she was sitting at the kitchen table with Pepper, and, of all things, they were looking at paint swatches for the baby's room. Phoenix didn't really care for pink, but she had already vetoed green from Loki.

"If I let him, he would have everything green," Phoenix said to Pepper with a laugh. "Green's fine, but a little variety would be nice." She was willing to accept that maybe she could pick a color and have gold accents, but that was as far as she was willing to go.

"Well, men can't be trusted to decorate anything," Pepper told her while they spread more swatches over the table. "If they even have an opinion, they get into color ruts. Tony would have everything be in red and gold if he did any sort of decorating."

Phoenix laughed, and would have made another joke about Tony, but she could hear Thor's booming voice coming up from the elevator. Even though Loki had a naturally quiet voice, she could hear his voice was raised as well. She could only tell what Thor was actually saying, though. It was something about Asgard and convincing his brother to visit home.

Why couldn't Thor just let some things be?

When the elevator opened, it was as if the two of them didn't realize that there were others in the room. "Brother, you should both come to Asgard. The child will eventually need to be presented at court," Thor said as the two walked off the elevator.

"Why are you so focused on this?" Loki asked him. "Besides, Phoenix is in no condition for that kind of travel. I am not putting her or our child in any danger just to satisfy some ridiculous tradition of a place than I no longer live at!"

"She scaled the building on her own a few weeks ago," Pepper remarked. Others were starting to filter into the room as well due to the raised voices. "You may want to give her a little more credit."

"I **am** also in here, you two," Phoenix said with a glower. "Do not talk as if I am not around."

Loki looked toward her. "Do you want to go?" he asked.

Phoenix shook her head. "Absolutely not."

Loki looked back at his brother. "See? Even she does not want to go. Why do you care so much about this?"

"Because we need to let Mother and Father know that they are going to be grandparents!" Thor demanded. "They are dying to see the both of you. Why are you so resistant?"

"Let's see...they lied to me all my life about my true parentage, I escaped from one of their jails, she **helped **me escape, and...OH! Did I forget to mention the part where she was banished to Midgard with no knowledge of who she was because of what some prophecy said?" Loki spilled out. Phoenix could see that he was getting angrier and angrier by the moment.

Phoenix stood up from the table. "Thor, this discussion needs to end. Neither of us want to do that. This place is our _home_. Why would we need to go anywhere else for approval that we do not seek?"

"You have never even been there! How could you know which place you would prefer?" Thor asked, turning toward her. "If you would only take a chance and..."

Phoenix hadn't even realized what she was doing until Thor's voice cut off mid-sentence. She had her hand around his throat and had actually managed to lift him off the ground. "Do **NOT** tell me what to do, Thor," she snarled at him. She could hear noise in the background, but she wasn't paying it any mind. "We are staying here, and that is the end of the discussion, alright?"

When he managed to nod, she dropped him, watching as his color started to turn back to normal as he gasped for air. It was then that she realized that all the 'noise' she had heard before were the others screaming, mainly for her to let Thor go.

She covered her mouth with her hand when she realized fully what she had done. "Oh god...I am SO sorry, Thor," she said. She had just wanted all of the screaming to stop and for Thor to stop insisting on things that were none of his business. She really hadn't meant to go all crazy and throat grabbing on him.

In a blind panic, she bolted from the room, not even checking to see if anyone was following her.

OoOoOoOo

Loki managed to find her hiding on the roof. "I have never seen anyone get the drop on Thor like that." His tone was light, especially since his pregnant wife was sitting near the edge of the roof, knees curled up to her chest.

"Are they angry?" she asked him.

He sat down beside her. "Not really. I think that they are blaming pregnancy hormones."

She chuckled then, leaning her head against his arm. "I thought about throwing Thor through a window," she admitted.

"Something I have wanted to do thousands of times," he told her. "He has bruises around his throat."

She turned and looked at him in surprise. "Really? I barely touched him!" He could see that she was starting to relax. "So much for being a god, the big baby."

Loki laughed and put his arm around her shoulders. "Are you alright?" he asked her.

She nodded as she leaned back against him. "I hope this is the last we hear of this nonsense from Thor."

"I doubt it. Thor can be a stubborn bastard when he wants to be," Loki said with a sigh, burying his face in her hair. "Maybe next time you should just toss him out the window."

"I don't think I can keep claiming pregnancy hormones every time I get mad at someone," she told him.

"You should keep using it while you can. Maybe we can get away with stealing all of Stark's tools," he suggested.  
"You're just TRYING to get us in trouble, aren't you?" she asked with a grin.

"I called a truce. I did NOT say that we were going to get boring," he pointed out.

"Alright, but let's wait until he finally goes to sleep, whenever that is," she said conspiratorially.

"That's going to take FOREVER," Loki said with a groan.

"It will be completely worth it," she told him. "Especially if we replace everything with ice cream."

He laughed. "I like the way you think."


	2. Chapter 2 Baby Names

Chapter Two: Baby Names 

(Author's Note: I went and re-watched 'The Avengers' again Saturday for the third time! It makes me want to go back and revise 'Second in Command' a little bit. I haven't decided for sure if I will or not, as it will likely only be small tweaks plus the addition of a scene or two, but if I do, I will make a note of it on here!)

The next day, there was a minor uproar at Stark Tower when Tony realized that all of the wrenches in his workshop had been turned into ice cream. He screamed, bitched, and moaned for twenty minutes, but, as soon as everyone else heard that there was ice cream around, they started eating them and he gave up.

Later that afternoon, a package arrived for Tony that turned out to be a new, top of the line wrench set, along with a small note:

_Tony, _

_Sometimes you need to be taken down a peg. No hard feelings, though. _

_Loki & Phoenix_

Despite the aggravation and the loss of a day's work (and no one saving any ice cream for him), Tony couldn't help but see the humor in this joke. Besides, at least they replaced them, although he was a little wary of the tools at first as he half expected them to be booby trapped.

OoOoOoOo

That same day, Phoenix had decided to spend the day at her apartment. Loki was out, doing some sort of errand that was supposed to include bringing home dinner for them both, and Phoenix was using her alone time by being sprawled on the sofa with a snoozing Socks stretched out on her lap, with a book of baby names as she flipped through them.

When she heard someone knock on the door, she thought about trying out the astral projection that Loki was still trying to teach her rather than getting up and looking through the peephole to see who it was, but then that idea was spoiled when she heard the shout "It is Thor! Can I come inside?"

At least it still saved her from getting up. "It's open, Thor. Come in!"

When he first came inside, she gave him an embarrassed smile. "I'm sorry again for yesterday," she said. She could still see the slight yellowish bruising where her fingers had dug into his neck. She set down the book that she had, moving around on the sofa so that Thor could sit down if he wanted to join her.

"I am sorry that I ambushed both you and Loki with my concerns like that," Thor said to her. "According to Anthony, I could have found ways to explain what I was trying to say more calmly."

"That's true," she agreed. "When people yell at Loki I tend to get mad." She wasn't just fiery because she could conjure fire without even thinking. She also had a terrible temper. It only seemed to be worse now that she was pregnant.

A small smile crosses the thunder god's face. "I can understand that," he told her. "If someone talked to my Jane the same way I talked to Loki or you yesterday, I would have done more than simply throttle them." His smile disappears. "I am just not sure why neither of you trust me on this issue."

She sighed. "It is not that we do not trust you, Thor," she said to him. "I think both mine and Loki's trust issues lie with your father." She held up her hand to stop him from interrupting. "Loki was raised believing that he was a blood member of your family, only to find out when he was an adult that he was a baby taken from Jotunheim with the idea that he could be used as a political pawn one day. Your father may have grown to love him and changed his mind about using him, but he should have told him the truth about his biological parentage long ago."

She took a moment to breathe and collect her own thoughts. "Do you know I have no memory of a childhood? Myth says that I was originally sweated from the armpit of Ymir. Now, I don't really believe that things were quite that...gross, but any memory that I might have of my life before I was left on Midgard was taken from me and I was left here alone and without a name or any knowledge of what I truly was. Your father was the one that did this because prophecy told him that I might help to bring about the end of the worlds."

She chuckled. "I cannot even quite argue, especially since I...tried to take over the world beside Loki. If we had both long ago known the truth about ourselves, maybe things could have been different."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Just how old are you? How long have you been here?"

She understood that, despite her looks, she was likely quite a bit older than Loki and Thor. "I really don't know," she admitted with a laugh and slight shrug. "I have seen civilizations rise and fall that are so old that nothing of them remains for historians to study. Think of it this way: you were only banished here for a few days. I was left here to wander for thousands of years. So long that I lost track. So long that I stopped believing in anything that might be out there beyond the stars, watching over humanity and myself. Loki was the first person I saw that was remotely anything like me. I didn't realize how close that assumption of mine was." Despite the fact that Loki was Frost and she was Fire, they were both Jotun, and thus more alike than they were like Thor.

"I see," Thor said, his own face guarded at the moment. "If I can get my father to promise that no harm will come to you, Loki, or your child, will you come?"

She almost sighed in frustration. She had just poured her heart out to this dunderhead and he was still pushing! "If you can get him to PROMISE, I will talk to Loki about it. Is that enough?" she asked him.

His face broke into one of those wide grins of his. "That is everything that I can hope for!" he bellowed, scarring poor Socks and causing the cat to bolt.

"Thor, we've really got to teach you about the idea of an 'indoor voice,'" she told him with a roll of her eyes, even though she smiled back at him. "You are going to accidentally terrify the baby if you talk like that around her."

"Ah! So I will be having a niece!" Thor said, not toning down his voice at all. "And I will have you know that I am excellent with children!"

"I'm sure that you are," she said to pacify him. "When you and Jane have your own children, I'm sure that you will be an excellent father to them as well." She had not spent a lot of time around the woman yet, as she assumed that Loki and she made the other woman a little nervous still. They had only recently started being anything resembling good.

Thor beamed. No wonder it was easy to get caught in this man's shadow, Phoenix mused to herself. The man seemed to naturally soak up all of the light in a room.

Soon, though, Thor left, seemingly satisfied that the two of them had more fully made up and that he had gotten something in the affirmative as far as them maybe one day going to Asgard. Socks did eventually come out from under the table that he had hidden under, jumping back on the sofa with Phoenix while she got comfortable again and picked back up the book of baby names that she had. She was realizing more and more that she hated everything that the book had to list. She set the book down before she lit it on fire or threw it through a window.

Just as she had put it away, Loki walked through the door. It was actually a little odd for him to use the door instead of just teleporting, which made her think that maybe he was tired. He had been gone all day.

"You look like you had a long day," she said to him, moving her legs again so that he could sit next to her.

"A little," he admitted as he sat down. "Fury seems to think that since we occasionally work together that I should start actually training with the Avengers as well along with going to their meetings," he told her with a look of distaste.

"Let me guess? Dreadfully boring," she asked, reaching up and running her fingers through his long hair. His hair was starting to get as long as hers.

He nodded. "If they keep making me go I am going to start tampering with their presentations."

"Gods, they're going to try and make me go after I have the baby, aren't they?" she asked with a whine. "I HATED those things when I worked for them before."

He nodded. "It's likely." He seemed lost in thought. "Maybe I'll change all of the links on the presentation to online porn."

She snorted. "No, first we should figure out exactly what Fury is into, and THEN change it to whatever he likes so that we can blame it on him as well."

Loki actually doubled over from laughing so hard. "That's perfect! Next time I am forced to attend one of those meetings I'm doing exactly that!" He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her to him, her leaning her back against his chest. "You really did miss your calling as a God of Mischief."

"Well, I *am* marrying him," she told him. "I should get to share the title by default then." She craned her neck to look back and up at him. "When do you want to do that?" They called each other husband and wife all the time, but they had yet to do any sort of official ceremony. Not that it really mattered to her. She knew that he wasn't going anywhere.

"Well, technically we have been married since we first slept together," he told her. "If you're going by more traditional morals." He chuckled when she rolled her eyes. "Not what you meant, I know. I thought maybe after the baby is born? I thought you might feel more comfortable wearing a formal dress then."

"I'll never feel fully comfortable in those," she admitted to him. "But that actually sounds good." That meant that she should be planning a wedding and for a baby at the same time. Thank the gods she didn't have to worry about anything else, really. Even if it was a few months after the baby was born, she still needed to start working on it.

"I wasn't planning on you staying in it for long," he said in her ear.

"Well thank heavens for that," she remarked with a smirk. "Thor stopped by and apologized for yesterday."

"He did?" Loki asked, eyebrow raised. "It is still hard to imagine that he knows how to do that."

"Well, I apologized, too, so do not get so caught up yet," she remarked. "He decided to talk more calmly about us making a visit back to Asgard," she said, rolling her eyes.

Loki let out a groan. "I really have no idea why he is so caught on that idea," he grumbled.

"I think he is stuck on the idea of everyone being one big happy family," she told him, rolling to her side slightly so that now her ear was against his chest, listening to his heart beat. "He said something, though. Something that I'm guessing means more than I realize. He asked if he got Odin to promise that no harm would come to any of us if we would consider coming."

She felt Loki stiffen under her. "If the Allfather agreed to promise, he could not break it on penalty of death."

"I thought it might be something like that." She remembered Vikings being all about oaths, and the Vikings had based their culture around the Asgardians. "Well, I don't think he'll promise anything like that anyway, so I am not worried about going there."

Loki relaxed again. "I do not see that happening, either." She felt him reach over to the coffee table, picking up the book she had put down. "Have you found a name you like yet?"

"No, they all suck," she told him with a pout.

"May I make a few suggestions? I had a few ideas," he told her, tossing the book away again. "Traditional ones, but they might be better than anything you've seen."

She sat up to look at him. "What is it with you and mentioning tradition today?" When he shrugged, she just laughed and lay back down. "Fine, suggest away, but I promise nothing."

"What about Sieglinde?" he asked.

She immediately made a face. "That makes me think of Siegfried which makes me think of those awful magicians," she told him.

"They were names before they took then," Loki protested.

"Nope. Next!" She was not naming her child anything that reminded her of people who kept tigers as pets.

"What about Olga then?" he suggested.

"Sounds like a fat old woman," she responded quickly.

"You are a terribly picky woman!" He was laughing, though, so she knew that he wasn't that mad.

"You've suggested two so far. When we get in the fifties then you can bitch," she told him. "What else do you have?"

"What about Gunnhild or Borghild?" He couldn't even say those with a straight face, and she just started laughing, too. "They are strong names!"

"Then give them to Thor to use for his future kids!" she told him. "Now you're just messing with me!"

"And don't mess with the hormonal pregnant woman, I know!" he said, rolling his eyes. He took a deep breath, now seemingly thinking for a moment. "What about Astra?"

That one actually sounded serious, so she thought on it for a moment. "It's pretty. Where did you get it from?"

He shrugged. "I just like it."

She looked up and smiled at him. "Then Astra it is."


	3. Chapter 3: He's Coming

Chapter Three: He's Coming

It was a few nights later, and Loki and Phoenix were in bed together, sleeping. He had spent the day working with the other Avengers, and she had been working on the nursery, so the both of them were pretty exhausted by the time that they laid down together. Loki especially had sunken into a deep sleep, arms wrapped around Phoenix's waist from behind, which was why he didn't hear her start to whimper in her sleep.

Phoenix didn't normally have any special dreams. Even the occasional nightmare wasn't anything special. She certainly never had anything resembling what one would call prophetic dreams. Until recently, she wasn't terribly sure that she believed in them, but, when you keep the company of two different gods, you usually have to expand your horizons.

The dream that she was having right now was something that she couldn't push herself out of. She had the feeling that she was floating, although she couldn't quite tell where. Everything was dark. She could only see the barest of light from nearby stars. When things started to come more into focus, she could see more that she actually _was_ in space. She could see that she was near a rock, or maybe an asteroid.

She could hear someone talking, someone with an inhuman voice. It took her a second to be able to focus on what he was saying.

"The humans are stronger than we thought." When she got a good look at him, she shuddered. He looked a lot like the Chitauri soldiers that Loki had once led. This couldn't be good at all. He was standing behind what appeared to be a giant throne, talking upward to it in an apologetic and almost frightened manner. "To attack them is to court death."

When the creature in the chair turned around, he didn't looked down at the thing talking to him. He looked at **her**. When he smiled, flashes of images started to flicker in front of her. A giant red beast invading the world she lived on, causing as much death and destruction as he could. All of the nations of the world being forced to submit to him. She could feel that he was trying to do it for someone, but she didn't know who. She felt like her head was starting to split open as more things appeared to her, but it was the giant red creature with his terrifying grin that made her finally start screaming.

OoOoOoOo

Loki had been sleeping the sleep of the dead when he heard an ear splitting scream penetrate his ears. When he realized just who's scream it was, he jerked awake, sitting up in the bed. Phoenix was bucking and thrashing about in the bed, and, with her strength completely uncontrolled, she was likely to hurt either herself or even him.

He gripped her by her shoulders, shaking her. "Wake up!" he called to her. "You're having a nightmare, wake up!" She opened her eyes and sat up, but she wasn't looking at him or at anything. She seemed to be still caught in her nightmare.

She had stopped screaming, but now she was saying something in a language that he didn't know. It sounded...almost Greek but not quite. Even if it had been Modern Greek, he wouldn't have known it anyway. He realized that she was saying the same thing over and over again, only two words, but he didn't know what they were.

"Phoenix..." he said, shaking her again. Then he did something that he thought he'd never have to do with her. He reared his hand back and slapped her across the cheek, just hard enough to hopefully snap her out of the stupor that she was stuck in, screaming her name at the same time.

She stopped, one hand reaching up to her reddened cheek, her eyes finally turning and focusing on him. "He's coming," she said to him softly, her entire body starting to shake.

"Who is coming?" Loki's worried because, even though she's speaking English again, he still had no idea what she was talking about. He's never seen her anything like this before. She's afraid.

She blinked, her eyes coming more into focus. "I didn't exactly ask for a name, Loki," she snapped, the fear in her eyes turning into slight annoyance, and, even with the aggravated look on her face, he's relieved that she's finally truly acknowledging him.

"Are you sure you weren't just having a nightmare?" he asked her.

He could actually feel her shaking in his arms. "This was pretty damn intense for it to just be a random dream, Loki." She took a deep breath and leaned more against his chest.

"What did he look like then?" he asked, stroking her hair in what he hoped was a comforting gesture.

"Scary as hell. Big red face, wearing a helmet and sitting on a throne." She was still shaking.

Now it was his turn to shudder with her, though. "I know who it is," he said, feeling his mouth go dry. The only thing that he could think as he held her close was that he had brought this on them.

OoOoOoOo

Everyone knew that if Loki was asking for a meeting, then something was wrong. Loki had bitched and moaned about being forced to have to start attending these types of things. Not that Tony didn't understand the fact that the majority of these meetings were utterly pointless. Actually, the more people involved in them, the more likely they were to be pointless. The meeting today was just Clint, Natasha, Bruce, Steve, Thor, and Tony. Pepper was around simply because she seemed always to be around Tony these days. She had even been nice enough to make Phoenix tea to drink, although she could not seem to do more than stare at it in her shaking hands.

The fact that neither Loki nor Phoenix had looked like they had gotten any sort of sleep. They both had black rings around their eyes. Loki looked both worried and guilty, and it seemed that, despite her always growing stomach, Phoenix had found a way to curl up as much into herself as she could, her knees tucked up against her chest (as much as possible), and, while everyone else was gathered around the kitchen table of the floor in Stark Tower that everyone stayed at, she seemed perfectly content with sitting on the far end of the couch in the living room, watching all of them with wary eyes.

When the last of them arrived (Tony of course), Loki wasted no time in getting started. "Thank you everyone for coming," he said, his voice even softer than normal. "It seems that an old...acquaintance of mine has decided to start making himself known."

Even though no one quite knew what he was talking about, everyone did notice that Phoenix shuddered and managed to pull more into herself. When that angry and wild of a creature was frightened, it couldn't be good. "When I...invaded before, I had made a deal with another so that I would have the army to do it with. It's a creature known as Thanos. He's...a being of terrible power. My agreement with him was that I would rule the Earth, and then I would hand over the Tesseract so that he could gain control of other worlds. If I failed to live up to my part of the bargain, I was promised retribution."

"And you're telling this to us just now?" Steve asked, eyebrow raised at him. "Why have you been keeping this a secret?"

"It was not intentional," Loki explained. "I thought that they were thousands of light years away from here. Without the Tesseract to open a portal, I did not believe that they would be able to get here. I get the feeling now that he might have found another way, though."

"Are we sure that the Tesseract is even where it's supposed to be, back in Asgard?" Tony asked. "I mean, could this Thanos dude have found a way to get it?"

Thor shook his head. "I do not believe so, but I will get in contact with my father in an effort to figure out if it has gone missing." He rose from the table, looking over at Loki. "How did you realize that this Thanos was moving forward with his plan?"

Before Loki could say anything, Phoenix's voice rang from her corner of the room. "I had a dream. I saw someone talking to him, saying that Earth was not the easy conquer that they had been promised. When he turned and smiled, I started seeing images of what he was planning on doing. He is the bringer of death so that he can impress the one he loves."

"Your dreams usually that informative?" Natasha asked. "You sure that you're not just having nightmares from something like a guilty conscious?"

Phoenix slowly tilted her head to stare directly at the Russian woman. "Loki never told me who had placed the army in his hands," she said slowly. "And you and I **both **know what nightmares from guilt feel like. This was more like someone forcing things into my head so that they could show me what they planned to do. It's not the same!" She screamed the last part, then taking a shuddering breath, tucking back into herself. While Natasha wanted to be mad that she had both been screamed at and Phoenix had hinted at her past, something she wanted to forget, she still couldn't help but be concerned for the woman. She looked utterly terrified of whatever it was that she had seen. That kind of stress couldn't be good for the baby growing inside of her.

"Right...so let's not question the validity of the dreams and instead look into if there's any way that we can either prevent this 'Thanos' from showing up or at least prepare for when he comes," Steve said, standing up as well. "I'll talk to Fury and see if S.H.I.E.L.D. can help in any way."

Phoenix started to chew on her thumbnail, not even realizing how normal and _human_ she looked when she did something like that. As everyone started to clear out of the room, she didn't move, staying on her little edge of the sofa, eyes staring off into nothingness, even as she felt Loki sink down onto the couch next to her.

"Why did you keep this from me?" She hadn't taken her nail out of her mouth, so her words were a little slurred, but Loki still perfectly understood what she was asking him.

"It is like I said before," Loki started. "I simply did not think they could get here..."

She turned on him so quickly that he actually jumped a little. "Don't lie to me!" she snapped. "I'm having images still screaming in my head right now and I don't know where they came from and the last thing I need right now is for you to lie to me because you think I'm protecting me!"

"I didn't say anything because I was terrified of what they might do to you and I didn't want to think about it!" he yelled back at her. "Do you know what I was told would happen if I failed? That I would wish for something as sweet as simple pain. I didn't know what that mean, Phoenix. I thought that they couldn't do anything worse than torture me."

He reached for her, pulling her closer and tugging her into his lap, keeping his arms close around her. "That was before I fell in love with you, though." Now she could hear that shaking edge in his voice. He was just as terrified as she was, although he was scared for her as opposed to the terror that she had felt over what she had seen. "Anything happening to you would be worse than any torture that they could inflict upon me."

She looked up at him, forcing him to meet her eyes. "You should have told me," she told him. "We can't deal with this if you're keeping your fears from me, Loki." Her voice was softer now and had lost that terrified edge that she had been speaking in. "You have to trust that we'll find a way to deal with Thanos. We're not even dealing with this alone this time." She forced herself to smile. "We have our favorite little meat shields to help protect us."

Neither one of them really thought that was anymore, but she was just trying to make light of a worrisome situation. "I hope you're right," he said, breaking off the look between them and pressing his face into her hair. "It's better that it's not us against the world, anymore."

Maybe if he kept telling himself that he might believe it.

OoOoOoOo

"Have they stopped screaming at one another yet?" Clint asked. Technically everyone had left the room to start dealing with the current situation in their own way, but the yelling had caused them quickly to converge in Tony's security room, so that they could watch the video feed of what was going on.

Tony shook his head. "It's a regular episode of Shakespeare in the park," he said with a snort. "Or, you know, a soap opera with gods. Whatever."

"They are a dramatic couple, aren't they?" Natasha said. They might joke, but watching the two of them argue with one another was more interesting than anything they could catch in a movie. She was half expecting Phoenix to pick something up and throw it at Loki, she had looked so mad.

The only one who was not amused by the scene on the monitors was Thor. "I have never seen Loki worry like this over another person," he said, softly enough that he might have been talking to himself.

"So the little emo god managed to actually fall in love with someone as dramatic as he is," Tony said with a sigh, reaching up and rubbing his eyes with both hands. "And they both have managed to attract the attention of something big, nasty, and pissed off that wants to take over the planet. Awesome."

"OK, they're not screaming anymore," Steve said, reaching up to shut off the monitor so that the two could have some privacy.

"Oh hell no! This is the best part of watching a fight!" Tony said, slapping Steve's hand away. "And if they do anything in my tower that's basically inviting us to watch, right?"

As Tony and Steve started to argue about whether they should give the two of them privacy or not, no one noticed that Loki had noticed that there was something recording them, and, with an angry flick of his wrist, motioned toward the camera. The monitor started to short circuit, throwing off sparks and driving everyone away.

"Sir, it appears that Loki has caused all of the security cameras in the building to malfunction." The voice of Tony's AI, JARVIS, spoke from above.

"No shit, Sherlock," Tony grumbled. "OK, this they are at least paying money for. Do you know how much time it takes to set all of that shit up?" He stormed toward where Loki and Phoenix were, but it seemed that they had already pulled a disappearing act. "And of COURSE they've already made an exit. Why do we deal with them again?"

"Because it's better to have them on our side than causing panic, chaos, and disorder elsewhere?" Bruce had followed him to the living room, barely able to hide a smirk from his amusement.

"They break or steal most of what I own! Let them start messing with your shit and see how funny you find it!" Tony snapped at Bruce, seemingly only causing Bruce's smirk to spread wider over his face.

"She stole all of my books and corrected the incorrect history facts in them," Bruce offered, trying to be helpful.

"But that's like, almost a good thing! They didn't turn all of your wrenches into ice cream and then didn't leave enough for me to have any!" Tony screamed, flailing.

"Tony, you're just mad that you were too distracted to save yourself any ice cream," Bruce pointed out, turning away to leave Tony to his flailing.


	4. Chapter 4: Two Unexpected Visits

Chapter Four: Two Unexpected Visits

Phoenix wasn't too familiar with the concept of nightmares that were continuous. Loki had them sometimes, but even he didn't have them on a continuous basis. Her dreams now seemed to get worse every night, though. Seeing the things that Thanos wanted to do just...disturbed her, and, for a several millennia old creature who had once tried to help take over the world and was willing to 'crack a few eggs' along the way, that was impressive. She didn't like being impressed with the new forms of cruelty that some being from a different world could come up with, though. That was one area that she had thought she had seen everything.

Apparently not.

She dealt with the nightmares in what was likely the worst way possible: she simply tried to avoid as much sleep as possible. She eventually sunk into a few fitful hours of sleep now and then, but mostly just lay awake at night staring at the wall or ceiling. She still lay in bed next to Loki at night, though. It was one of the few comforts that she had at the moment.

The team of Avengers (she still thought that name was ridiculous, but she didn't get a vote on it) were doing any sort of research and searching for Thanos that they could, but they sadly had little to go on. Loki was able to provide some knowledge, but Thanos hadn't exactly been forthcoming with him, and they had Phoenix's dreams to go on. Since she saw mostly future events, that didn't help all too much.

After the third day of trying not to sleep, Phoenix felt the need to get away from her apartment, at least for a few hours. If anyone asked her about it, she would just claim that she had a craving for tacos, and a person shouldn't stand between a pregnant woman and her cravings, but she honestly felt that the walls were starting to close in on her, in a metaphorical sense. She hadn't even realized this morning that she had been pacing until Socks hadn't been quick enough to get out from under her feet and she stepped on his tail. After much apologizing (and a can of tuna), she knew it was time to go somewhere else.

There was this little taco stand near her apartment, so she figured that it would be best to stay close to home and go there. Even though the craving hadn't exactly been a lie, when she got them and sat down at a nearby picnic table, she hadn't felt the urge to do much more than pick at them. She had managed to eat her way through the first of three that she had gotten when she felt someone watching her.

The feeling wasn't too abnormal for her. She knew that Nick Fury was having her and Loki both watched when they weren't around the other Avengers. He likely didn't trust them as far as he could throw them. They were just too powerful in their own right to really turn away, and locking them up was too much of a pain in the ass. She was familiar with the agents who watched her. She even made a habit of waving at them when she spotted them, mainly to annoy them. She knew all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s moves, so it wasn't hard to for her to figure out where they would hang when she went places.

She looked in the direction that they would usually hide, but today the agent who was watching her was actually walking over to her. It wasn't one of her usual agents, either. This one was quite familiar to her, though.

She had killed him, after all.

Phil Coulson sat across from her at the table. He looked just the same as the day that she stabbed him from behind in that helicarrier. Well, he was no longer bleeding through his chest, but she assumed that his wound had healed a while ago.

"Hello, Coulson," she said, tilting her head and studying him.

"Hello," he said, staring back at her.

"Why am I not surprised that you aren't dead?" she asked, pushing her food aside. "It wasn't like I stabbed you in the heart."

"It's not like you didn't try killing me," Coulson remarked.

"Suppose you have a point," she admitted. "Do the others know that you're alive?"

He shook his head. "I didn't even wake up until after the New York incident was over," he told her. "I wasn't exactly in good shape. Fury told them I died because it would help them pull together. To tell them now that I lived would upset them."

She tilted her head at him. "To lie to them is worse," she said. "Even when I tried to help take over the world, I didn't lie to anyone." She could see that she hit a nerve. She figured that it was Fury's order to keep his continued living a secret, not an idea of Coulson's. "Anyway, what are you doing here?" she asked. "None of the other agents who follow me around usually join me for lunch."

"You didn't start having prophetic dreams until recently," he told her. "Fury's interested in what you know. What you've been seeing."

"I've already told everyone what I've seen," she said to him quickly.

"You haven't been sleeping the past few nights," Coulson said to her.

"Have you really been watching me that closely?" she asked him, now looking directly at him.

"You have dark rings under your eyes," he pointed out to her. "And yes."

She sighed. "I'm still dreaming, if that's what you mean," she told him. "I don't even know why I'm having dreams. I've never had these types of dreams before. I'm immortal and I'm strong and I can do some magic. Dreams and prophecies...not only do I never have them, but I don't even believe in them." Of course, she didn't believe in them. Despite the fact that she had been sent to this planet in an effort to put off a destiny, she did find that she subscribed to the more 'American' ideal that the only fate a person had was what they made.

"Maybe the best way to deal with prophecies is to work your way around them," Coulson told her. "You need to go into more detail about what you have been seeing."

She rubbed her eyes. "Terrible things," she said with a shudder. "Worse things than anything Loki and I had planned." She felt his stare. "We wanted to rule. This *being* wants to completely destroy. I feel like he's doing it for someone, but I don't know who."

She started describing the things that she had been seeing, talking in a low voice as not to attract any attention from other people walking and sitting nearby. It was almost funny to make a trained agent for S.H.I.E.L.D. blanch at the things that she was describing, but the seriousness of the situation kept her from being too amused.

"Why didn't you say any of this before?" Coulson asked her.

"If we prevent it, it does not matter," she told him. She started slowly to pick at the second taco. She was starting to think about just taking them home and feeding them to Socks. He'd appreciate them. "I avoid thinking about them as much as possible. Talking about them means I have to think about them."

"If you go over these even more with others, maybe you'll discover something that you didn't think of yourself," Coulson pointed out to her.

It wasn't that he wasn't right. He likely was. He didn't quite get her point, though. She sighed and started to put away her food in the bag she had been given for them. "I do not believe in hell, but this Thanos wants to release hell on earth. Forgive me for not wanting to think on it too much."

He nodded, seemingly finally catching her drift. "Tell Fury what I told you," she suggested to him. "If you all can figure out something, let me know." She stood up from the table. "For what it's worth? Sorry for the whole 'stabbing' thing."

That apology actually made him laugh. It really wasn't that great of an apology. "Why did you do it?" he asked her. "Not the stabbing. I was in the way. I mean why did you side with him in the first place?"

She couldn't help but smile a little. "I've...actually lost track of how long I've been alive. Loki was the first person resembling a god that I'd ever seen. When a god tells you to kneel, you tend to drop down." She was making light of it, but who wants to admit that they've been around for thousands of years but never believed in _anything_? That she hoped that the brainwashing would work on her because then she had a real chance to believe? Even when it didn't work, she went along because she wanted to feel something. She...ended up feeling something else other than worship, and it was a first for her, too. Despite the death and whatnot, she really didn't want to change her actions.

Even though she didn't want to get too far into her feelings on the subject, Coulson seemed to be able to put together much of what she meant. "I think I understand," he said with a nod.

"You should consider what I said, Coulson," she told him, moving away from the table, wanting to head home. "The others...I think they miss you. They're bonded together now. I don't think it would destroy team loyalty just because you're alive." She smirked. "Try talking with Fury about it."

She turned and walked away, not giving him a chance to respond. She likely would not tell anyone other than Loki that she had seen him. If he revealed himself to her, she doubted that he was planning to keep it a secret for long, anyway. Maybe talking to his supposed killer was sort of like his coming out party.

She walked home and ended up giving Socks part of the tacos that she had gotten. "You're starting to get fat," she remarked to him as she watched him eat. He actually turned to look at her, as if to say _you are the one who feeds me_. In addition, she had no real room to talk about fat, but at least she was eating for two. What was his excuse?

She was curled up on the sofa when Loki got home later, only half watching whatever it was on the television. She didn't have the energy to focus on reading anything. Her eyes flickered over to Loki when he walked inside, though.

"You look exhausted," he said, sitting down next to her. She automatically moved so that she was leaning on him instead. "When's the last time you got any real sleep?"

"You know when," she told him simply. "When I sleep I dream. I do not want to dream." When she dreamed she witnessed something made of pure evil unleash hell on the entire world. Why would she want to revisit that?

"This isn't good for you," he told her. Despite not wanting to sleep, her eyes fluttered shut when he started to stroke her hair. "This isn't good for Astra, either."

"I'm not sure the nightmares are good for her, either," she remarked, but didn't have the energy to fight him when she felt him move and lift her up, standing up with her in his arms.

"I know that you do not want to sleep." She had told Loki more than she had told even Coulson. He knew exactly what she didn't want to face. He had even seen and dealt with Thanos in person. He _knew_. "Staying awake in bed at night isn't going to help you be prepared for any sort of onslaught, either."

She groaned, but she knew that he was right. She just pressed her head to his chest as she felt him carry her to the bedroom. She's already more than half asleep when he sets her down on the bed. She didn't even feel him pull back the covers but they're on top of her. He must have done it with magic. She could feel him slide into the bed next to her, his arm sliding around her waist (as much as it can now, with the pregnant belly and all), and pulls her closer to him.

She opened her eyes slightly to meet his emerald ones. "Promise to wake me up if I'm having a nightmare?" she asked him.

He nodded. "I'll be the one to stay up tonight," he said to her. "I will just lie here and watch you sleep."

"That's a little creepy, Loki," she said, shutting her eyes again.

"Says the one who's been watching me sleep the past few nights," he reminded her.

She chuckled, but was asleep before she even finished laughing.

OoOoOoOo

She doesn't dream of terror tonight, which is nice. She dreams that she's sitting by a stream in the woods. It feels a little odd, and the dream is still very clear and bright like the other dreams, but this dream makes her feel calm rather than afraid.

She had been thinking of nothing (the first time in a few days) when a young girl sat down next to her. Despite not knowing her, Phoenix didn't turn to her to study her as she usually did. She didn't feel the need. She could see that the child had black hair out of the corner of her eye, and looked to be around seven to nine in human years. Something about her seemed completely comfortable and natural. Phoenix felt completely at ease.

"These aren't your dreams," the little girl said to her.

"And how do you know that?" Phoenix asked, staring at her and wondering just why she looked so familiar to her.

The little girl didn't answer that question. "You have to prepare," the girl says, still staring at the river. "He'll be here soon. He'll take you both and destroy you. You can't let that happen."

"Nor do I want it to," Phoenix told her, lying back in the grass. This place looked a lot like upstate New York, but it was even prettier. She wondered just where this was. It made her think of her time spent with Loki last year.

"I picked this place because you have happy memories from it," the girl said, smiling as she looked around. "I wanted to make sure that you were comfortable."

"No offense, kid, but when you say things like that, I get a little creeped out," Phoenix admitted with a nervous laugh. "I don't like it when Loki is able to occasionally pick things from my brain. I'm not too fond of it when a stranger does it, even if it's a little kid."

"We have already been together for months," the girl said, finally turning and looking fully at Phoenix with a very familiar smirk on her face. "Do you really not know who I am?" The girl had stunning blue eyes. _Phoenix's_ bright blue eyes.

Before she could answer, Phoenix jerked awake. Socks had also been dozing on her as well and looked at her indignantly when she roused him out of his sleep, too. She felt Loki stir beside her. So much for keeping watch on her. He had fallen asleep, too. Then again, he hadn't been getting much sleep, either.

When she moved, though, she felt him move as well, shaking himself awake. "Any dreams?" he asked, sleep still in his voice.

She smiled, hand drawing over her stomach. "Just one," she said quietly. Even though things still had a grim look, this particular dream had made her feel a lot better.


	5. Chapter 5: Bad Day Again

Chapter Five: Bad Day Again 

(Author's Note: Actually, the true title of this chapter is 'One Shittastic Day,' but I figured I should at least refrain from swearing in the title of chapters. I try to be polite!)

After the last dream with the young girl (whom Phoenix still couldn't quite admit to herself that it was who it was), her dreams had stopped. Even though she knew it would be more helpful if she kept having them, simply because she could apparently learn something from them, she was really grateful that they were done with. They completely drained her of any energy that she might have. After getting some real sleep for a few nights, she felt more like herself again, or as much like herself as she could be while still having a beach ball for a stomach.

The next few months were quiet, but there was still heaviness in the air. Everyone was still watching and waiting for something to happen, but no one seemed to know when or what would happen. In the ensuing months, Phoenix had finished putting together the baby's nursery. Pepper finally convinced her that she should use at least some pink, and, more because she knew Loki would like it, she had added green as well, although she had stuck to more of a natural grass green than the type that he favored. The room was really more done by Pepper than it was done by Phoenix, as she really didn't know how to decorate anything. She was planning to get the woman some sort of thank you gift, although she had no idea what. She'd ask Tony, but he likely wouldn't know what to get her, either.

Even though she was supposed to stay home as much as possible, Phoenix could only set things up in Astra's room for so long without going stir crazy. She decided that she would do some light grocery shopping. ANYTHING to get out and not be staring at the same walls all day. She was in the grocery store around the corner from her apartment, wondering if she should buy the organic beef or the regular beef, as she wasn't actually sure what the difference was between them other than the price, when a large explosion happened to the left of her, knocking her off her feet and onto her back.

She felt like a damn turtle stuck on her back, and had just managed to roll over on her side when someone grabbed her by her dark hair, pulling her backwards and across the floor. She screamed and tried to pull away, but, before she could, whomever had her hair pulled her closer and slammed her face first against the concrete floor. She hadn't realized that the floor was concrete until her forehead is hitting it, and then she didn't realize anything else because whomever had her had enough strength to knock her straight into unconsciousness.

If anyone asked later, she would blame the fact that she was near full term pregnant for being so weak.

She woke up later, completely unsure of the time or how long she was out, pushing herself out of a cot that someone had dropped her on in a jail cell. She growled as she stood up, wandering the cell for a few moments and ignoring the splitting headache she had, trying to figure a way out of there but there seemed to be no way. She pushed and pulled at the cell door with all of her strength, but the damn thing didn't even budge.

Out of frustration, she kicked the cell door. "Where am I? Who dares have me here?" she screamed. "Let me out of here or I'll eviscerate you and everyone else that you've ever met!"

"That would be quite the challenge," a deep voice said behind her.

She managed to somehow not jump and turn around, turning to see the very large red man who had once been haunting her dreams. "There are not that many people who can sneak up on me, especially not twice," she said to him. "You haven't answered my question, though. Where am I?"

"Hidden away," he said, taking a step closer to her. "I don't think that Loki or your other little buddies will be finding you any time soon."

She kept her eyes steady on him, making sure not to show any of the fear that she was feeling. "So instead of picking a fight with someone who could fight back right now, you instead kidnap a helpless pregnant woman. And here I thought I was supposed to be afraid of you."

"You're hardly helpless, Phoenix," he pointed out to her. "I had the element of surprise, after all." Another step closer. She would move away but her back was already against the cell door. "Besides, you are simply a means to an end. I have a promise to repay to Loki. He did not deliver the Tesseract, so I owe him something worse than the pain he thinks he knows."

"So you kidnap his pregnant wife. How _delightfully_ original of you," she replied, crossing her arms over her chest and rolling her eyes.

"Sometimes the classics are that way for a reason." He looked it over. "It's also a classic for a man to be willing to trade himself for his woman, which is exactly what I am expecting." In an instead he was fully across the small cell, holding her by her arms and pinning her against the cell door. "And after I take the trade, I will rip the child from your womb and kill you both in front of him. I will show him that physical pain is _nothing_ compared to mental anguish," he snarled, a sneer spreading across his large face. She realized that her feet weren't even touching the ground. He had her lifted up quite high in the air so that their eyes could meet.

She lifted up her hands with the simple intent of pushing against his chest with all of her might, just wanting him to let **go** of her, but, when she pushed her hands against his chest, she suddenly felt more dreadfully cold than she ever had in her life and ice was shooting out of her hands and pushing Thanos away from her.

He let her go and she dropped down hard to the floor, unable to stop herself from smiling, despite her chill, when she noticed the look of shock on Thanos's face.

He shook the ice off himself, looking her over. "You shouldn't be able to do that."

She shrugged. "Shows that even you don't know everything." She was clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering right now. Did Loki feel this cold when he used those powers?

"It means that your child will likely be a frost giant," Thanos said to her. "Considering that you are fire, you may not survive the birth."

"I'm still pretty sure that you don't know everything, so I'm not going to take your word for it," she snapped, biting back a groan as she pushed herself up from the ground. "You're just mad that I caught you off guard."

With a snarl, he vanished, and she finally gave in to the chill, shivering as she moved and sat back down on the cot, grabbing the thin blanket on top of it and wrapping it around herself. She'd been naked in snow before and hadn't felt this cold. Maybe her body wasn't meant to handle this sort of thing. She doesn't feel afraid of anything that might happen, though. She's far more worried about what Thanos might do to Loki or her child than the fact that she might get hypothermia from giving birth.

OoOoOoOo

Tony had thought he had seen the worst in Loki when the Asgardian tried to take over the world. Then he had recognized the type of crazy that the god suffered from. It was scary, especially when the god had grabbed him and thrown him through a window, but those days were supposed to be over.

Of course, Tony hadn't realized that Phoenix would do the impolite thing and get herself kidnapped, either. She was so paying for the damage to his building when they found her and she turned out to be fine. Loki had already ripped his bar to pieces in a rage. Well, one of the many bars in the building because Tony couldn't be far from alcohol for long, but damnit that one had been his favorite!

"Thor, could you please make your brother stop destroying everything in my tower?" Everyone had actually hidden away in the security room again, as no one wanted accidentally to be hit with something that Loki was throwing at the moment.

"I have never seen my brother this angry before," Thor said, never taking his eyes off the screen as Loki managed to pick up a sofa and hurl it through a window.

"So you've never seen the psychotic side of your brother?" Natasha asked sarcastically. "I was pretty sure that was all that you had seen."

Thor shook his head, the sarcasm lost on him. "I have never seen him rage because someone was taken from him."

Natasha seemed to catch the difference, because she nodded in agreement. "Still, you need to go in there and actually, you know, stop him from accidentally dropping something on someone's head on the streets below. "

"Yeah, make him be constructive and not destructive on my stuff," Tony added.

"There are more important issues than your possessions, Anthony Stark," Thor said, but he walked out of the little security room, anyway.

"He does have a point," Bruce said. "There are more important issues than the fact that Loki completely destroyed your bar." He grinned when Tony made a face. "Even if it was a really _nice_ bar. We have a missing pregnant god who could give birth at any minute and, while we're pretty sure who kidnapped her, we have no idea where to look for her nor do we know exactly what this guy is planning on doing with her."

"Plus this could all be an elaborate trap," Clint responded from his little perch in the room.

Bruce nodded. "Also, that."

"Yeah well, if we sit around and wait to see if it's a trap, I think Loki might get started on destroying people instead of just stuff," Steve told them. "So, as much as I'd rather sit and plan a better attack, we need to get moving as fast as possible.

Before everyone could agree or disagree, Loki and Thor started yelling at one another in the other room. They didn't have to watch on the screen to be able to hear them. They were actually really loud.

OoOoOoOo

"You don't know what it's like, Thor! Do you have any real idea of what it's like to feel this helpless?" Loki shouted at him. "And before you get into that 'I was a mortal once' spiel, it's not the same." To Loki, it was worse to have power but still not be able to do anything. At least when Thor was mortal, he had an excuse.

"I have never had the one I loved kidnapped, no," Thor replied, obviously trying to keep his own anger under control. He had already yelled once. "I was worried that _you_ were going to do it once, but thankfully that time is long past."

Loki took a deep breath, knowing that his rage wasn't going to accomplish anything, even if he wanted to put more holes in Stark's Tower in some vain effort to make himself feel better. "I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy," he gritted through his teeth.

He stiffened when he felt Thor's large paw of a hand rest on his shoulder. "Do not worry, brother. We will get her back, and soon. Put your energy into working toward getting her back, not destroying things."

Loki nodded. He knew of a spell that could be used possibly to track Phoenix, as long as Thanos hadn't countered against it already. At least he had personal affects to use to strengthen it.

(Author's Note pt. 2: I admittedly have no idea what Thanos's powers are, but he's big and red and scary as hell, so I just kind of wing it. Hope you enjoyed the chapter! I am admittedly not TOO happy with the second part of it, but what can you do? Action should pick up next chappie, though!)


	6. Chapter 6: Labor Pains

Chapter Six: Labor Pains

Phoenix had quickly lost track of the amount of time that she was spending in this cell. She only had a vague understanding of time because three meals were delivered to her cell a day. Thanos had thankfully kept his big red ugly head away from her as well. She was worried because she didn't know what he was up to, and he could be out there hurting her...

Damn, the almost thought of them as friends, didn't she? She didn't _really_ think of them as her friends, did she? She didn't have any real concept of the idea of friend. Then again, she had no concept of love until recently, either.

She thought on it for a second. She supposed that Pepper counted as a friend. She had bonded with the woman over working on Astra's room, and she found the woman to be witty and intelligent, and bossy in an amusing way, although Phoenix supposed that she had to be if she had to deal with Tony Stark on a daily basis.

She originally thought of Tony as a particularly intriguing pet. His reactions to any sort of prank played on him amused the hell out of her. He tended to get extra pissed when someone touched his things, which was why Phoenix and Loki especially liked to break them. She supposed that she stopped thinking of Tony as a pet around the time she started to refer to him in her head as 'Tony' instead of 'Stark.' He really was a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. Well, she didn't know about the playboy part personally. When she wasn't tormenting him in some way, she actually enjoyed talking to him. Damn, guess that meant that he was a friend, too.

She wasn't sure if she would consider the doctor a friend, although she knew that Astra liked was fond of him. Well, she went by how much her child seemed to spin in her stomach, and she was most relaxed around Bruce, and the least around Steve Rogers. She found the Captain to be a bit on the stiff and self righteous side, personally, and it seemed that her child agreed with her. Clint and Natasha were off on missions far too often for her really to get to know them. Clint also still seemed...at ease around her and Loki both, although she wasn't too shocked by that.

This left the one and only Thor. As much as he irritated her, Socks DID love to rub against the lumbering dunderhead whenever he showed up at their apartment, and Phoenix did happen to trust the cat's judgment with people (Socks had also once found a way to use Rogers shield as a litter box, so she REALLY thought the cat had a good eye with people).

Damn, she DID care about the majority of them. She even had to admit that she didn't want any REAL harm to come to the others. Well, harm that she didn't cause, at any rate, which was just as good in her book. This was why she was even more worried about what Thanos was doing right now. She almost disliked the idea of having so many people to worry about.

Almost.

She also hated the fact that she could sit in here and do little. The bars on her cell were reinforced. No matter how hard she hit or kicked, nothing budged. No one opened or closed the cell door, instead sliding in food through a small slot. If she weren't pregnant, she was sure she would have found a way out of here, but she had to think about the life inside of her now. She couldn't even call on the ice abilities of her daughter. She was sure that, if she had a lesser constitution, she'd still be sick from it. She had been curled up in a ball underneath the meager blanket that she had been given and could do little more than huddle and shiver. When she recovered from that, she hoped never to have to need that again. She put the idea out of her mind that she might not survive the birth. The gods only knew if Thanos was simply trying to scare her or what.

She had been alone with her own thoughts for so long that she hadn't even noticed a change in herself at first. She felt her stomach kind of cramping, but had thought it was simply the shitty food that she had been given. The only reason that she had eaten it at all was because she didn't want to starve her child because the people here didn't know how to cook. (Tony Stark's abortive efforts had tasted better than what they were serving her.)

It was when she had stood up to stretch when she finally noticed that something was amiss. Her...her pants were wet. When she realized that, everything clicked together in her head. She wasn't just sick from the food she was having LABOR PAINS.

She hobbled over to the jail cell door. "Hey," she called out, pressing her face against the bars. "HEY! Pregnant lady going into labor here! Anyone going to help me with this or am I going to have to deliver this baby by myself?" Where the hell was everyone? For that matter, no one had brought her breakfast yet. Did they forget that she was here?

She screamed when another intense pain struck her. She'd had her head cut off before and it didn't hurt as bad as this! What the hell was she thinking when she allowed this to happen? Her hands tightened around the bars and started rattling the cage. "Let me out of here or I'll make sure that your eternities are spent experiencing the worst tortures that can be imagined!" she screamed.

She hadn't even realized that she was gripping the bar so hard that she was actually starting to warp the metal. With one more desperate scream, she kept jerking at the bars on the door until, to her eternal surprise, this time she actually managed to wrench the door completely off its hinges, falling backwards and only barely managing to keep it from falling on top of her. Gasping for air, she eventually managed to roll over on her side and get herself back off the ground. She had no idea how she had managed finally to pull the cell door off, and could only assume that she had slowly worn it down and the extra rush of adrenaline from the excruciating pain she was going through was sending her strength into overdrive.

She was now sitting on the ground, but another labor pain hit her and she could do little more than scream in anguish. "I can't believe that I'm going to give birth in a goddamn PRISON CELL!" she screamed to no one in particular.

Before she could scream or push herself off the ground or even crawl through the now open prison door, she could hear thunder outside. Gods PLEASE don't let it just be a rainstorm. Thankfully someone was listening to her prayer, because, moments later, the Thunder God himself slammed hammer first through the cell wall from the outside, causing debris to fly everywhere.

"Phoenix! Have we found you?" Thor called out, looking through the haze to see if she was around.

Phoenix just screamed and picked up a small piece of the former wall, throwing it at Thor's head. "I'm down here and you could have hurt me and I'M GOING TO KILL YOUR BROTHER FOR THIS!" she screamed. "WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS WAS GOING TO HURT SO MUCH?"

Thor moved to squat down beside her, actually looking for wounds. "Did they hurt you in some way? Have you been injured?"

"Thor you idiot! I'm not hurt I'm IN LABOR!" She couldn't stop screaming. If she wasn't in so much pain right now, the look of sheer panic that crossed the blond man's face would be hilarious. "Stop staring at me and bring me to Banner!"

"Ah...I am sorry, but Bruce is...he is busy at the moment," Thor said, looking anywhere but at her at the moment.

Phoenix could hear a roar from one of the lower floors, which meant that Bruce Banner wasn't Bruce Banner at the moment. "Then I suggest you find a way to de-Hulk-ify him soon because if I give birth here, my child's first present is going to be your head on a silver platter! Since I am not partial to the name Salome, I suggest you GET MY DOCTOR!" Somewhere in the back of her brain, she knew that she was being unreasonable, but she was in so much pain right now that she simply did not care.

While she assumed that he didn't quite get the full reference to Salome, he seemed to understand that she was going to follow through on her threat if he didn't at least take her to Banner. With a sigh, he scooped her up with one arm, saying, "Hold on tightly. I do not want to imagine what my brother will do to me if I drop his angry, screaming, pregnant wife," before swinging his hammer again and sending the two of them flying out of the window, giving her just enough time to wrap her arms around his shoulders so that she didn't go flying off in some random direction.

OoOoOoOo

It had not taken too long to figure out a way to trace where Phoenix was. The woman put off her own signature like the one Loki did, and, either in a move that either smacked of arrogance or stupidity (likely arrogance), Phoenix hadn't been hidden that far away. Everyone knew that this was likely some sort of elaborate trap, but Loki threatened to turn Tony's private jet into a giant dragon if they didn't go as soon as they had figured out where she was, so waiting to come up with a tactical plan wasn't in the cards.

Everyone knew that Thanos was supposed to be nearly all powerful, although he still didn't have the Tesseract, as it was still very safely hidden away on Asgard. However, that didn't mean that they had any idea of how to defeat him. Steve in particular didn't really like the idea of going in unprepared, but threats from one god and the idea that he would be perfectly happy to go through with them if people didn't comply, it seemed like they were going in and hoping to beat the ever loving hell out of Thanos until he stopped moving.

Loki also didn't seem interested in taking anything resembling a long way to get there. He had simply grabbed Tony and teleported straight there as soon as Tony had suited up. Tony hadn't been happy about that, as apparently, teleportation made him want to vomit, AND Loki hadn't even asked first.

Tony knew that, if something similar had happened to Pepper, he would be trying to kill whatever it was that had taken her away, but Loki was terrifying in a way that he hadn't even been when he was trying to take over the world. He ran around screaming for Thanos to appear, and, when he finally did, there was no time for witty repartee. Instead, Loki immediately leapt forward and attacked, swinging his scepter thing at Thanos's head. Tony was just glad that Loki's rage had given him time to take the big red guy in, because Phoenix's descriptions had NOT done him justice, although now he could see why she didn't want to sleep a few months ago if that guy's big ugly mug was showing up in her dreams.

Minions of his were popping out left and right, which made Tony get busy really quick. He was also eternally grateful when the rest of the team showed up. Bruce was even already and conveniently hulked up, and, when Loki wasn't attacking him like a madman, actually giving Thanos a run for his money in pure strength.

Thor hadn't shown up yet, but someone had to go off and find 'the missus' but Tony hadn't been expecting the wild eyed and screaming banshee that had apparently replaced Phoenix at some point in her captivity to show up while being held by an exasperated looking Thor.

She wasn't even yelling in English. He had assumed that English wasn't her native tongue, but he had no idea what the hell it was that she was screaming at Thor.

Despite the battle going on around them, he heard Natasha laugh near him. He looked over at her and saw that she was watching Phoenix and Thor as well. "You understand her?" he asked, jerking a thumb in the pregnant woman's direction before dodging a weapon aimed at his head.

She nodded, lashing out with a kick against some minion's chest. "I'm thinking that Phoenix's native language might be ancient Greek," she said, dropping to a crouch before leaping up on some other guy's shoulders, doing the very scary thigh thing that she does with people's necks. "Oh and apparently she's in labor, thus all the angry screaming."

Tony's eyes went wide and he turned back in Phoenix's direction. "Lady, you picked a hell of a time to have a baby!" he snapped, his distraction gaining him what appeared to be a weapon slamming into his sternum.

OoOoOoOo

Phoenix had been screaming at Thor, just assuming that he was stupid for not understanding her. She hadn't even realized that, in her pain, she had reverted to speaking in her original tongue. When Tony had screamed at her, she realized what she was speaking.

"Because I picked this time on my own!" she yelled back at him. "Where is Loki? And where is my doctor? I require assistance!"

"Fighting Big Red somewhere!" Tony shouted back after recovering from his own hit, sending an energy blast in the enemy's direction who had dared hit him.

"Great," she growled, seemingly listening to the noise around her for a second before taking off in a direction that she heard one of Banner's roars from. She didn't even watch as Thor reluctantly followed. After only a tiny amount of wandering, and nearly grinding her teeth into powder to keep herself from screaming in pain, she marched into another large room, watching as the Hulk charged, barreling directing into Thanos's chest, sending the two of them flying. "Can we end this soon?" she called out. "I require the assistance of my doctor and he's currently too giant and green to deliver a child properly."

While Thanos and Hulk paid her no mind, Loki, who had been firing blasts from his scepter, did turn and look at her, eyes wide as he seemed to realize that Phoenix had went into labor at some point.

Before he could say anything, though, a flying Hulk shot across the room, followed by a stalking Thanos, who seemed to have heard everything, despite being tied up at the moment. "Ah yes, the little frostling's birth is at hand," Thanos said, starting to stalk over toward her. "I wonder how well you will be able to deal with it."

Phoenix had no patience for this at the moment. As he started to talk again, she did the first thing that came to mind. She grabbed Thor, lifted him up over her head like he was a barbell, and hurled him over at the Titan, walking up to him as he and Thor went flying across the room. "SHUT UP! I DON'T CARE WHAT SORT OF VENDETTA YOU HAVE GOING ON RIGHT NOW! I WILL HAVE MY BABY IN A NORMAL PLACE WITH A DOCTOR IF IT'S THE LAST THING THAT HAPPENS ON THIS RIDICULOUS BALL OF DIRT THAT IS CONSIDERED A PLANET!"

Phoenix had figured out a TINY little loophole to the whole 'only Thor can lift the hammer' deal. If you lift Thor while he was holding the hammer, he was still holding the hammer, which didn't seem to count toward weight. Right now Thor's hammer was against Thanos's chest and, despite the being's great strength, he couldn't get up. Thankfully, Thor didn't think to pull the hammer off his chest, so there Thanos stayed.

"Oh wow." None of them had realized that the rest of the Avengers had followed along after dealing with the last of the minions in the other room and had arrived just in time to see Phoenix pick up Thor and hurl him like a ragdoll. "That's almost too easy. Why the hell didn't I think of that?" Tony asked.

"Apparently pregnancy hormones trump genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist," Rogers said, making sure personally to keep his distance from the still seething rage goddess in front of him.

Phoenix wasn't even done. She stomped up toward the prone form of Thanos, snarling as she aimed a kick at his ribs, more to vent than any hope to cause real damage. The weight of the hammer was accomplishing that for her. She then turned her attention onto the Hulk, who, instead of raging at the tiny screaming woman, was just staring at her in bewilderment. "I'm going back to Stark Tower for the medical floor. If you do not come back as Banner ready to deliver my child, I **WILL** find a way to rip that pretty green head off your shoulders. Do you understand me?" Amazingly, the Hulk just nodded. It seemed that, deep down under the rage, he understood that this was NOT the person to fight with.

She walked back up to Loki. "We need to leave," she said simply to him.

"But…we cannot just leave Thanos like this. We need to fully eliminate his threat," Loki said to her.

"Then get me to Stark Tower and teleport back," she told him in an almost too calm voice. She then said something else in another language, this one that Loki at least understood by the way that he visibly paled.

He cleared his throat and looked toward the group of Avengers. "I shall be back shortly," he said, grabbing Phoenix around her waist and teleporting the two of them away.

"I'd say that he's whipped, but she's terrifying right now," Clint said.

"What the hell did she say to him?" Tony asked, looking toward Thor.

"I believe she threatened to castrate him with a wooden spoon," Thor said with a slight shudder. "I was not aware that labor made women go so…insane."

Natasha rolled her eyes. "Men. You really do know nothing about us, do you?" she asked with a sigh.

(Author's Note: Thanos WILL have a more permanent punishment than just being left with Thor's hammer sitting on top of his chest. Phoenix just…went into labor and completely took over this chapter. Even I refuse to argue with characters when they are that scary.)


	7. Chapter 7:Don't Bring Champagne to Birth

Chapter Seven: Don't Bring Champagne to a Birth

When Loki and Phoenix appeared in Stark Tower on the proper floor, the first thing that Phoenix did was bury her head into Loki's chest and let out a piercing wail. She was sure that the pain was getting worse by the second. She couldn't believe that causing her so much agony.

"What can I do?" Loki asked, basically being the only thing keeping her up off the ground. She was trying to keep herself from screaming something awful. Her legs were shaking badly right now.

"Just help me onto a bed," she said through gritted teeth. He slid his arm under her legs, lifting her up and heading toward one of the hospital rooms, delicately putting her down onto the bed.

Before she could thank him (or possibly scream at him as another contraction happened), Pepper came running into the room. "Tony called me," she said as she walked up to the bedside. "They're waiting with Thanos right now." She looked up at Loki. "They...kind of need you to go back for a little bit."

Loki looked fearfully at Phoenix, who just waved at him. "Just try and be quick, OK?" she asked. He reached down and squeezed her hand briefly before disappearing. It was good that he disappeared then, as another, worse contraction hit, causing Phoenix to scream again.

"You just need to breathe, OK?" Pepper told Phoenix, getting the remote to the bed so that she could make it sit up slightly.

"I haven't forgotten how to do basic functions, Pepper," Phoenix growled. She still tried to take some deep, steady breaths, anything to try to distract herself from the pain that she was feeling right now.

"We need to get these pants off of you," Pepper told her, reaching up to start getting the clothing off the woman. "I doubt your daughter would really want to be birthed into a pair of pants."

Despite her irritation at everything in the world right now, Phoenix did feel herself cracked a slight smile. She lifted up her hips so that the pants could be pulled down. "I think you're the first person I have not wanted to maim in some way today, Pepper," Phoenix admitted to her.

"I'll take that as a compliment," Pepper said, suddenly shivering. "Is it just me or did it just drop ten degrees in here?" she asked, looking around.

Phoenix's teeth were starting to chatter. "Not you," she gritted out. She screamed when an even harder contraction hit, feeling her fingers start to go numb. When she looked down at them, she could actually see tiny trickles of ice ease out of them and start to freeze the metal bars that she was gripping.

"Oh my god," Pepper said, leaning forward and looking at Phoenix closely. "Your lips are starting to turn blue. What the heck is going on?"

"The baby inherited Loki's abilities rather than mine, it seems." Now Phoenix was shivering violently. "I do not exactly do well with cold." That seemed to be an understatement. "We need to get Banner here quicker." Actually, she really wanted Loki here, but she wasn't sure that he knew how to assist a birth. Well, he might...she really had NO idea how much of myth was fact.

OoOoOoOo

It was still weird to think that, for one moment, Thanos was completely destroying them, and after another, Phoenix had hurled a hammer wielding Thor at him and basically taken care of the immediate threat.

When Loki had reappeared, he had come up with the idea of essentially 'freezing' Thanos, so that he would be dealt with for the time being. From what little that they were all about to discover about him, he was stronger than even Thor and Loki, which meant that any conventional sort of imprisonment was just impossible.

Thanos had spit and cursed at them, but Loki was able to do the freezing process so that they were eventually sitting there with a block of Thanos rather than a regular Thanos. "Wow...he's just like Han Solo now," Tony said, looking the block over. Thor had only removed the hammer when Loki had him frozen up to almost his chest.

Steve started laughing. "Wow...that's one I get," he admitted when everyone turned back to look at him.

Tony just smirked. "I knew those movie nights would start to do you some good." The original Star Wars Trilogy had been one of the first things that Tony had made the super soldier watch. He still refused to let him see the newer ones, though. Even Tony realized that, no matter how much money you threw at something, it could still suck.

Bruce had thankfully changed back with little incident. It was actually somewhat impressive that Phoenix had been able to intimidate him or impress him or something. He had just finished changing his clothes when Loki had finished up with Thanos.

Loki looked over at Bruce as he came back into the room. "We need to go, Banner," he said, grabbing the doctor by the shoulder. "Phoenix was wailing when I left her, which means that she might attack Pepper if she has another fit."

"Nah, she likes Pepper!" Tony said with a wave of his hand. "But yeah, go teleport or whatever you need to do. We'll load the Thanos-cicle up in the helicarrier."

Bruce looked at Loki. "Does this hurt?" he asked nervously.

"Hope you don't get motion sick, Bruce!" Tony said with a smirk, waving him goodbye just before Loki teleported him away. "Alright, who wants to help me load up the new centerpiece of my living room?"

OoOoOoOo

When Loki and Bruce first appeared back at the hospital floor, the first thing they heard was an ear splitting shriek that caused Loki to grab at Bruce again and drag him toward Phoenix's room. He hadn't been expecting to see his wife wrapped up in a blanket and ice covering half the bed.

Bruce looked around in bewilderment. "What the hell is going on?" he asked.

Pepper, who had some point had went and gotten a jacket, looked over at them. "Oh thank god you're here," she said, going over to them. "Go...help her give birth!" she said, pushing the befuddled man over to the bed. "And no, I don't know why everything is getting covered in ice."

"I AM GIVING BIRTH TO A FROST GIANT!" Phoenix shrieked, doubling over in pain. "I feel like I'm going to freeze to death."

"Phoenix, you need to calm down," Bruce started, but he didn't get to finish because the woman grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him down to her.

"If one more person tells me to calm down I am going to force feed them their own spleen," she snapped. "Now shut the hell up and HELP ME!"

When he was able to extract his shirt from her hand, he told Pepper to help move her down the bed, which Loki standing behind her so that he could keep her sitting up. Phoenix could feel a cold sweat forming all over her. She could feel herself shivering again, leaning in to Loki when he reached over and swept the dirty hair off her face. "Just concentrate on my voice, darling," he said in her ear. "Let's see if we can find a way to keep your temperature up."

Despite everything, his voice was starting to relax her a little. She watched him as he made a small, green fire appear in his hands, and she didn't even flinch as he pressed it against her forehead. She felt her entire body unclench slightly when she felt a rush of warmth spread all throughout her. She would have fallen back on the bed if Loki hadn't been holding her up.

Bruce looked up at her when he felt her body go a little bit limp. "I'm going to need you to start pushing soon, Phoenix, OK? You're completely dilated. The baby is going to be here any time now."

"Just get the damn kid out of me already," Phoenix gritted at him. She certainly felt a little better than before (and a lot less _cold_), but she was still in a lot of pain. He started to do an alternating count of five, one to wait for her to push, and then five for her to push. After the third set of pushing her head slammed back against Loki's chest. "Oh god I think I'm going to be split in half," she half said, half sobbed.

"You're doing great, Phoenix," Loki said, pressing his lips against her forehead.

"We're just going to need a few more pushes, Phoenix," Bruce said to her.

"Gods why don't YOU push!" Phoenix snapped. Even so, when Bruce told her to push again, she did so.

"I can see the head!" Bruce called out. "She's got black hair! One more push!" She pushed one more time, screaming as she did. She could hear the baby start to cry, along with a startled gasp from either Pepper or Bruce (she wasn't looking at them).

"Why the hell is the baby blue?" Pepper called out.

Phoenix suddenly had so many endorphins running through her that she absolutely didn't care. "Ah...my true form is blue," Loki admitted, running a hand through his hair. "She's supposed to look like that."

"Can I see my baby now?" Phoenix asked.

"Let me just cut the cord and get her cleaned up," Bruce said, starting to move about. "Now I see why you kept asking what color she was when we did sonograms."

"BE QUICK ABOUT IT, MINION! I WANT MY BABY!" That did seem to speed Bruce up, although he did have a bit of a sour face when he handed Astra over to her, now wrapped up in a blanket. Her face broke into a wide grin as she looked down at the little blue wonder, running her fingers over Astra's face, watching as her skin turned to a more normal pinkish hue, her eyes changing from the red of a frost giant to blue like hers.

"Hello Astra," Phoenix said, rubbing her face against the baby's soft head.

"She's beautiful," Loki said, getting Phoenix to tilt her head up for a kiss.

OoOoOoOo

Outside the hospital room, the rest of the Avengers had gathered, most still in battle garb (Tony had taken off his suit as it was just...clunky to walk around in) in the hallway, sitting on the floor and waiting to hear SOMETHING that wasn't Phoenix screaming some sort of obscenity.

"Good gravy that woman can scream a lot," Steve said, wincing when she bellowed again.

"She is giving birth, Steve," Natasha said, not even flinching when another scream rang out. "Imagine pressing something the size of a small watermelon out of your..."

"And just like that I'm never having sex again," Tony interrupted. He was actually holding a champagne bottle to open whenever the kid was actually born. Well, he had come with two bottles had had already drank one of them mostly on his own.

"It all relates back to sex with you, doesn't it?" Clint asked with a roll of his eyes.

"Yeah, pretty much," Tony said with a grin, toying with the cork of the remaining bottle. Hell, he could drink it now. Not like he didn't have more elsewhere.

Before anyone could say anything (or throw anything at Tony), they all started to hear a baby crying. Thor let out a cheer loud enough to shake the walls, and his enthusiasm just kind of...caught on with everyone else, especially since he started grabbing everyone in those bear hugs of his that tended to lift people off the ground.

Just as Tony popped the cork of the remaining bottle, Pepper came out of the room. "The baby's here!" she cheered. "She's OK! Everyone's OK!" She ran up and hugged Tony in excitement.

"Can any of us go in yet?" Steve asked, although he barely had gotten the words out before Thor went running into the room.

Thankfully, Bruce had helped get Phoenix back up onto the bed and put a blanket over her as Thor ran into the room. "Brother!" he yelled, wrapping Loki up in another hug. Loki's eyes nearly bulged out of his head from the strength of it. "Congratulations!"

"Thor," Phoenix said in a slightly shaky voice. "I am sure that the father of my child needs to breathe eventually."

Nodding, Thor set Loki down, who took a deep breath. She grabbed at Loki's shirt. "Take the baby; go show the others before they all flood in here."

Just as he was taking Astra, though, everyone else rushed into the room. They all seemed to converge at once on the bed, including what appeared to be an increasingly drunk Tony. "Why did you bring champagne into a birthing room, you drunk!" she yelled, grabbing a pillow and hurling it at his head.

As his reflexes were a little slowed, it smacked him right in the face. "Come on! It's a token of celebration!" he protested.

"One that the person who did all the work cannot have," Loki said, looking pointedly at the bottle for a moment.

Tony brought it to his lips to take another sip, only to spit it back out as if it was poison. "Did you just turn my Dom Perignon 1966 into fucking _water_?" he asked. "Do you know how much this thing cost?"

"Brought it on yourself, Tony," Pepper said with a barely contained grin.

"Last time I let ANYONE give birth in my tower," Tony grumbled.

(Author's Note: Everyone sitting around outside the hospital room and hearing the baby cry before anyone coming out and telling them anything is actually based on when one of my nephews was born when my family and I were all sitting outside basically doing the same thing, only with less booze! Because Tony would use ANY excuse to drink.

And Loki would use any excuse to annoy him. Hope you enjoyed!)


	8. Chapter 8: MotherinLaws and Pets

Chapter 8: Mother-in-Laws and Pets

For the next few days, when she wasn't feeding the baby, Phoenix spent most of her time asleep or eating. She hadn't exactly been treated too wonderfully in the prison cell, after all. The food had certainly been meager compared to what she usually ate, and she had expected a lot of energy during the birth.

Still, she was mostly exhausted. Loki barely left her side, especially once Tony gave up and arranged for them to be moved into a private room on the floor that the rest of the Avengers lived on. Bruce didn't think that she was ready to go home yet (she was still weak), and she didn't want to be away from her doctor. Loki had _eventually_ turned his champagne back to what it was supposed to be, so he couldn't stay mad about that. Well, not *too* mad.

The one time that Phoenix had convinced him to leave, it was to go out on a call for the rest of the Avengers. He had promised that he would help the rest of them out when needed, and now was not the time to go back on that agreement.

Phoenix had just finished feeding Astra, and was rocking her to sleep when someone knocked gently on the door. Phoenix hadn't even heard anyone walk up, but was too relaxed at the moment really to worry about who it was, so she just called out "Come in," softly enough not to rouse the baby.

A woman that she didn't recognize walked in, with long, curly blond hair. Even though Phoenix had never seen her before, she had a pretty good idea who she was. The regal stance she had kind of gave her away. In addition, despite Loki being adopted, she and Loki shared similar facial expressions, if the smile she had on her face was any indication.

"Who told I had given birth?" Phoenix asked her as she sat down in a chair that Loki usually occupied. Phoenix was lying in the bed under a blanket. Every time that she stood for more than five minutes, either Loki or Bruce chased her back in the bed.

"Heimdall," she told her. "He felt it was time to alert us when you threw one of my sons at Thanos." She chuckled. "I don't think anyone realized that someone could technically lift the hammer if Thor was already holding it."

"I really think it was a once in a lifetime opportunity," Phoenix pointed out. "I mean, I did catch him off guard." She sighed. "That and I was miserable pregnant woman. I think most of them feared me."

"I threw everything that wasn't nailed down at Odin when I was pregnant with Thor," she admitted with a laugh. "I am Frigga, by the way."

"Phoenix," she replied with a smile. "I think I threatened to kill both of your sons in creative ways. I can't quite remember everything I said to them." The past few days were nothing but a blur. She looked down at Astra. "Do you want to hold her?" she offered.

Frigga smiled and nodded, opening up her arms to take the baby. "She looks so much like Loki when he was a baby," Frigga said as she held the baby in her arms.

"In more ways than you'd think," Phoenix admitted with a slight laugh.

Frigga caught her meaning. "Ah, then she inherited his abilities then," she said with a nod.

"Frankly, since she's so dark haired, I think that the blue skin looks better than mine would," Phoenix said with another laugh. She had to admit that she liked the blue skin and red eyes much more than her own black skin and yellow eyes. "I was worried about...well, I didn't know what she might get from me."

"Her being more like a fire giant wouldn't be the worst thing in the world," Frigga said to her.

Phoenix shook her head. "Sometimes I feel like I'm boiling in my own skin. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, especially my own daughter." She looked away for a moment before smiling, wanting to change the subject. "I wish I had known you were coming. I would have...I don't know, brushed my hair or something! It's not every day that I get a visit from a queen."

"I think you look just fine, dear," Frigga said, waving her concerns away, seemingly in many ways. "Besides, you just gave birth. Now is the best time to take advantage of the fact that you do not need to dress up."

They had kept talking for a while, with Phoenix convincing Frigga to tell her a few stories about Loki and Thor in their childhood, and she hadn't even realized that anyone had gotten back to the building until Loki walked in, a look of complete shock on his face when he realized that Phoenix wasn't alone.

Before Phoenix or Loki could say anything, Frigga stood up and walked over to him. "My son," she said, pressing up on her toes and kissing him on the cheek. Phoenix had to admit that she was a little amazed that Loki didn't flinch or pull away. "I'm so glad to see you happy finally."

"Hello, Mother," Loki replied, allowing her to pull him in for a hug as well. She had never seen him be anything resembling truly affectionate with anyone but her and Astra. He accepted Thor's brotherly hugs and pats, but he doesn't really initialize anything with Thor. He seemed somewhere in between how he was with Thor and how he was with Phoenix with his mother. "I did not realize you were going to visit."

"If I had tried to make my presence more known, would you have stayed here?" Frigga asked him. Loki and Phoenix glanced at each other, realizing that she had a point. They might have tried to flee. "I wish things weren't still so distressed in our family, but I understand that it may take a long time to forgive that we didn't tell you the truth." Frigga glanced back at Phoenix. "Either of you."

Phoenix looked down at her hands, not quite up to meeting her eyes during this type of conversation. She wasn't exactly comfortable talking about the way that she had ended up on this world, and Frigga was directly referencing it right now by way of an apology of sorts. "Now, if your husband would apologize, all of this might lead somewhere," Phoenix muttered, not intending on saying that aloud, but there it was.

Frigga frowned, but she didn't look angry. It looked like she understood their anger a good bit. "He does have a purpose for everything he does, even if he is occasionally _misguided_ on some ideas. You should not have been sent away," she said, looking toward Phoenix. She then turned her attention back to Loki. "And you should have had the truth explained to you a long time ago."

Frigga smiled as she looked down at Astra. "Hopefully with her can begin a new future. I am very glad that the two of you found each other. Seems like you two have turned into good influences on one another."

Loki snorted. "I believe that is the first time I have been called a good influence on anyone," he admitted.

"From what I have seen, you two seem to be a lot less angry as of late, at least when you're together." Frigga smiled. "And not in labor pains. You were…you were funny, I have to admit."

"It wasn't as funny being there," Loki grumbled. "She threatened to castrate me with a wooden spoon!"

Phoenix picked up a pillow and hurled it at his head, which he easily caught. "If you had ever gone through labor pains you would understand!"

She watched as Loki started to blush and Frigga's eyes went wide. "You haven't told her yet?" Frigga asked, looking at him.

"I was waiting for the right time," Loki said, reaching up and running his fingers through his long ebony hair.

Despite her renown for her temper, Phoenix just started laughing. "So it is true!" Loki looked at her in confusion. "Like I _wouldn't_ read about you while you were gone before!" she pointed out. "So, when do I get to meet my stepchildren, anyway?"

"Ah…as soon as you'd want," Loki offered, still sounding a bit confused at all of this. "I really didn't expect you to react so well. I mean…most people wonder how I even give birth."

"You're a shape shifter. I'm older than…well, dirt. There is little that surprises me, anymore," she said with a shrug. "Does that mean that you can carry the next child? I must admit that I am not exactly eager to go through it again, at least not so soon."

Phoenix and Frigga both started to laugh at the freaked out look on Loki's face. "You're going to be the death of me," Loki muttered as he quickly made his way out of the room.

OoOoOoOo

"I have a whole new and terrifying respect for Loki," Tony said as he flipped through a book of Norse mythology that Phoenix had given him. Oh, when Loki had admitted to having his children, she decided that she DID feel the need to torment him a little from seemingly keeping the revelation from her.

Therefore, she had simply informed the other Avengers. She figured Tony alone would annoy him enough that it would be worth it. "How did it work with the horse, though? That's the one I really don't get," Tony admitted, looking at the book in confusion.

"He turned into a female horse," Phoenix said with a shrug. "I don't see what is so confusing about that."

"You're asking me what's weird about a man turning into a female horse, getting pregnant, and then giving birth to an eight legged horse," Tony said, giving her a sarcastic look. "Are you serious?"

"You humans really can be so closed minded," Phoenix said with a laugh. "But do go and ask him yourself about it. He deserves nothing less for thinking that he could keep something so important from me."

"I am not closed minded! I'm very sexually liberal," Tony snapped.

"Oh so I've seen by the way I've noticed you occasionally staring at my husband," Phoenix purred to him. "And me, for that matter. From what I can tell, you're _very_ sexually liberal."

She smirked as Tony swallowed hard. "Right…I think I hear Pepper calling me!" he said, jumping up and trying to run out of the room, Phoenix's laughter echoing off the walls. She had come out into the living room with Astra, and Tony had been the only one sitting out there at the moment, drinking far more coffee than was fit for human consumption.

She grabbed him by his shirt and jerked him back onto the sofa with her. "Now now, I didn't hear anyone calling you. Don't be so skittish, pet. I wouldn't harm you," she said, reaching over and ruffling his hair.

Tony flailed, trying to brush her hand away. "I am not a pet! Stop calling me that!"

"Would you rather I call you minion like I do Bruce?" she asked. When he shook his head again, she giggled. "Then be a good pet and go make me some ice cream. If you're good I'll share it with you," she offered in a sing song voice.

Tony grumbled and stood. "I'm only doing this because you can crush my windpipe…NOT because I'm a pet," he said to her.

He jumped and yelped when, after he stood, she leaned over and slapped him on the ass. "Keep telling yourself that, sweet cheeks," she said with another laugh.

She started to laugh harder when she heard him grumble to himself, "Knew I was going to pay for all of the people I slept with and tossed out the next day."

"Ha! I knew you liked men, too!" she snapped at him, watching as he scrambled faster into the living room. He hadn't said 'women,' but 'people.' Like she wouldn't catch that.

OoOoOoOo

She actually had been nice and spoon fed Tony some of the chocolate ice cream after he fixed some for her. She had actually been doing just that when Loki returned from an outing with his mother and brother. Apparently, they had taken her out for a dinner before she was to return to Asgard.

"Anthony, why is my sister-in-law feeding you ice cream?" Thor asked when he walked in with Loki, who was just smirking with his arms crossed over his chest as he watched.

Tony sighed. "Apparently I'm a pet," he grumbled, opening up his mouth for another spoonful of ice cream. "It has its advantages, I'll give it that."

"He's my faithful lapdog. Why _wouldn't_ I feed him treats occasionally?" Phoenix asked innocently.

"You are Satan, you know that?" Tony asked her with a pout.

"No, the closest thing to that that really exists is my step-daughter, remember?" she asked him, spooning a spoonful of the ice cold goodness into her own mouth.

"Did you have to tell him about that?" Loki asked, looking just a touch exasperated.

"Oh I didn't have to tell him anything, dearest. I just gave him the book I originally read it from," she said with a smirk.

"That's right!" Tony said with a grin of his own. "So, how did things start with that horse, anyway?"

"Don't people on this realm usually get their pets _fixed_?" Loki asked with a darker look toward Tony.

As the color drained a little from Tony's cheeks, Phoenix reached over and covered his ears. "Loki! He can hear you! You'll make him upset!"

"What on Midgard did I just walk into?" Thor asked, utterly confused.


	9. Chapter 9: Making Memberships Official

Chapter 9: Making Memberships Official

"Tony, I cannot believe that you actually put that thing in the lobby of the Tower!" Pepper said with a groan. "Why did Fury even allow you to take it away, anyway?" She was staring up at the very tall 'statue' of Thanos that Tony had decided would anchor the look of the lobby in a way that nothing else would.

"Because the wizard who did the freezing is always around, so maybe he figured that, if there were any problems, he could deal with them?" Tony said with a shrug, taking a long sip of the Slurpee that he had gotten from down the road. "Besides, it really ties the whole room together. Why wouldn't the headquarters of the Avengers have one of their enemies frozen in carbonite like Han Solo? It sends a message."

"The message that we're giving sounds a lot like we're Jabba the Hutt," Pepper pointed out to him, crossing her arms over her chest.

"I'm not wearing a Slave Leia outfit, though," Natasha said, coming up behind him. "Even I have my standards."

"You seduce and kill men for a living," Tony snapped at her. "I didn't realize that you could still have standards."

Natasha just shrugged at him. "Fury wants us all to make a meeting in ten minutes," she told him. "Your 'owners' are supposed to come as well."

"I'm never living down the ice cream feeding incident, am I?" Tony asked, looking down in the vain effort of trying to hide the blush creeping up in his cheeks.

"You looked ready to curl up in her lap and have your tummy rubbed, according the Thor," Natasha said to him, smirking. "Well, until Loki mentioned getting you _fixed_, anyway."

"That really would help kill a lot of my PR problems," Pepper remarked.

"I'm not getting fixed! Stop even saying that!" Tony yelled, shaking. The idea of it was horrifying.

"Don't worry, Tony. No one's taking the venom out of your little viper just yet," Natasha said, pinching his cheek. "I'm going to go tell everyone upstairs." She then walked off to the elevator so that she could do just that.

"Hey! It's not little!" Tony protested, missing Pepper groaning behind him.

OoOoOoOo

Phoenix had gotten Pepper to watch Astra for her while they all attended this 'meeting,' which was actually taking place in one of the more business rooms in Stark Tower, it seemed. She really couldn't imagine just what it was that Fury wanted with _them_. Maybe he wanted some sort of debriefing. She assumed that the others had given theirs, but she hadn't given one herself. She HAD just given birth, after all. She had been busy!

Loki had actually been the last to arrive, around fifteen minutes late, looking rather smug with himself. Phoenix looked up at him with a smirk, knowing that he had been up to something, figuring that she'd get to find out soon enough just what he had done. Whatever it was, she hoped that it was good.

"Glad to see that everyone has finally decided to arrive," Fury said, face, as always, hidden behind the mask of stern disapproval.

"Because I am sure that Tony is ever at these things on time," Phoenix pointed out. He had arrived only a few minutes before Loki. "Besides, this thing was last minute, or I was only told of it last minute, anyway. Why do you want us here, anyway?"

"Well, if you'd stop talking, I'd like to get to that," Fury pointed out with that one-eyed stare of his. "Sometimes I think I liked it more when you were silent all the time and just stared at people."

"I also frightened most of your agents," Phoenix said quickly. When everyone else in the room looked at her, she shrugged. "They found me disturbing."

"Not sure if that has changed, though," Clint said from his chair. He had his feet propped up on the table, arms crossed over his chest as he leaned back in his chair. "You're still kind of disturbing."

"I'd watch what I was saying if I didn't want my arrows to turn into roses at the worst possible second, Barton," Loki said to him.

"CHILDREN!" Fury yelled. "If we can get back to the matter at hand." Everyone started to settle back down. "Now, in the last several months, Loki has been a tremendous help with any Avenger needs that we've been having."

"I have no idea how you people did without me before," Loki mused. "You people only seem to run around reacting to things rather than any sort of real planning."

"Kicked your ass before," Clint remarked. "Pepper had to talk Stark out of making a memorial out of the holes Banner left in the floor with you." A small fire started in his lap then, causing him to scream and flip out of the chair backward. Luckily, for him, Steve managed to grab a fire extinguisher and put him out before any real damage was done.

Everyone turned to look at Phoenix when Clint was properly put out, as she still had a small flame dancing about her fingers. "What?" she asked. "He asked for it, didn't he?"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Fury screamed. "GOD when did the Earth's mightiest heroes turn into a bunch of bickering teenagers with superpowers?"

"They make it worse!" Clint yelled, pointing at Loki and Phoenix. "At least Tony never lit me on fire!"

"Well that's too damn bad, because I'm offering them both an official invitation to join the Avengers Initiative," Fury said. "So I would suggest learning to not piss them off to the point of one of them setting you on fire!"

Well, that's certainly wasn't what Phoenix had been expecting of this meeting, and it seemed that no one else was expecting it, either, as the room erupted into noise as each member seemed to voice some opinion on the subject. Clint obviously disagreed with the idea of them joining, Natasha was trying to calm Clint, Thor was jumping around like a school girl, which was making everything in the room shake as he was not shaped like a schoolgirl, Steve and Bruce were trying to talk to Fury over the madness about what this would mean and how the public might react when they really got to see two former most wanted list members fully working with them, and Tony wasn't saying anything because Phoenix had reached over to scratch his head and, despite how degrading it was, she did seem to know exactly what spots to hit.

As Fury tried to get the room to calm back down, everyone's phone started to go off at once. Instead of their own individual rings, though, they were all actually using the same ringtone that most people likely wouldn't have on their phones. The song playing was "Cotton-Eyed Joe" by Rednex and, after everyone tried hitting the answer button, silence button, or even off button, their phones wouldn't shut off. Considering the echo that was coming down the hall, it seemed that every phone in the vicinity was ringing with the same tone as well.

Phoenix just started giggling like a kid when she realized that THIS was why Loki had arrived late AND had been so happy looking when he arrived. She was still giggling when Loki scooped her up out of the chair. "Well, I think it's time we take our leave, Fury," Loki said as Phoenix buried her head against his chest to try to muffle her laughter. "I do believe that we'll...accept your generous offer?" He looked down toward Phoenix, who, despite her fit of laughter, managed to give him a nod. "Good! Good day to you then!" With that, both of them vanished.

"That's what you want us to work with?" Clint asked Fury over the still ringing phones.

"Better that this is the worst that either of them want to do to us, even if it is annoying as hell," Fury said, turning to walk out of the room.

"I can't believe we all just got Loki'd like that," Tony grumbled, fiddling with his phone for a second before slamming it down on the table. "I can't even turn the sound off!"

"Seems like even the favored pet cannot escape the pranks," Clint said, seemingly getting some sort of satisfaction from that.

"Oh hell, I could have told you that!" Tony retorted. "I'm pretty sure the both of them get off on tormenting me in some way."

OoOoOoOo

After they teleported away, they made a quick pit stop to pick up Astra from Pepper (not explaining why they had left the meeting early), before heading back to their apartment. Thankfully, they had gotten a neighbor to feed Socks, so he was fine and dandy when they came through the door.

"Sorry we haven't been home, Socks," Phoenix said, leaning down and petting the black cat. She then slowly picked him up and lifted him so that he could see Astra, who was being held by Loki. "Now, I have someone for you to meet. This is our daughter, Astra."

"Phoenix, I'm not sure that Socks can exactly understand what's going on," Loki admonished.

"Maybe he's something more than a cat," she said with a shrug. "I still don't know where he came from."

Loki leaned forward and studied Socks for a moment. "He doesn't _feel_ like a familiar or anything," he said, although he was obviously more humoring her than anything else.

"Even if he's a plane old cat, we still have to introduce him to new things when they come into our home, and that especially includes our daughter," she pointed out. Socks leaned over slightly and sniffed the baby, then licked her face before leaning back, losing interest fairly quickly. "I'll take that as a good reaction," Phoenix said with a grin, setting Socks back onto the floor. The cat rubbed against her leg once before wandering away.

She then took Loki by the hand and led him and the baby toward the baby's room. She cooed at Astra after Loki set the baby in the crib. "Do you think she'll be alright in here on her own?" Phoenix asked.

"Of course," Loki told her. "That's what we have these things for, anyway," he said, picking up one of the baby monitors. "She cries, and we can hear it no matter where we are in the apartment." He smiled and took her by the hand, letting the baby sleep in her bed for the first time.

"Are you sure that joining the Avengers full time is the right thing?" she asked him as they walked back to the living room. "I mean, we did try to kill them once or twice."

"Can't do the same thing forever. Then they might expect it," Loki said with a grin.

Phoenix sat down on the sofa, watching Loki as he headed into the kitchen to make drinks. "Alright, we have to keep them on their toes, but we can do that without being fully with them, can't we?" she asked. She had agreed to it earlier, but she wanted to know why he was agreeing with this himself.

"Actually joining with them does come with certain perks," Loki pointed out. "Plus they do make good meat shields in case things ever come to that." He grinned. "Plus Stark does make for a pretty good pet. Maybe we can even get the rest of them trained."

"I'd prefer Rogers in a kennel," Phoenix said with a pout. "And Barton is still grumpy from the whole 'you took over his mind' deal. You'd think that he would learn to forgive and forget after a while."

"Eh, he'll get over it eventually, and at least Rogers would make a good babysitter," Loki explained.

"He does seem like the type that would be good with children," she conceded. Maybe she could just treat him like a drone or something. That could work!

"See? We can make this work," he said, bringing her a drink and sitting on the sofa next to her. "Besides, we can always just outlive them and then take over the world from the inside," he suggested. He pulled her over closer to him, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close. "It's nice to have you alone again, and not in a tower mostly full of idiots."

"Mostly full?" she asked, tilting her head back and looking at him with a grin.

"Banner and Stark aren't complete idiots, I suppose," he said with a slight shrug. "Good enough to at least make pets or minions out of."

"Pretty much my opinion on the matter," she said, moving slightly so that she could kiss him.


	10. Epilogue: Happy And Not Tony's Driver

Epilogue:

A month after the baby was born, they arranged to have their wedding. Anything resembling a honeymoon would have to wait until the baby was just a little bit older, but both Loki and Phoenix wanted to do the ceremony as soon as possible. Both of them wanted something simple, though. There would be no over the top royal ceremony. They mainly just wanted to have something that celebrated their union with their...ugh, they were friends, weren't they?

She had never thought that she'd ever have people that she could call friends (even if she claimed them to usually be either pets, minions, or even drones when she was mad), but here she was with a small group of people watching her as she walked down an aisle. They had decided to have an outdoor beach wedding, and Tony decided to provide by allowing them to use his private beach in Malibu.

Phoenix had also picked out a dress only a few days before. She had rapidly dropped the weight from her pregnancy, so she had been reluctant to pick out anything, only for it to not fit a week later. Plus, with Tony's connections, she could easily get something very quick, as long as she was willing to pay. Her dress only went to her knees, as she still had no real love for anything being around her lower legs. The strapless white gown was made of some gauzy material, but it breathed well and she loved it. She had worn her hair loose, free flowing down her shoulders.

She walked up the little aisle that they had drawn in the sand, her bare feet squishing into the warm ground. She looked up at Loki at the end of the aisle, seeing him as more relaxed than she had ever seen. He was wearing a pair of loose khakis and a white button down shirt. His hair, for once, wasn't slicked back, instead hanging loosely about his face. Thor was standing beside him, functioning as the best man, and Pepper was standing in as the maid of honor. The other Avengers were also in attendance, along with, after some negotiations on both sides, Odin and Frigga. Jane Foster had even come, although she was here more as Thor's date rather than for Loki and Phoenix. She had even brought Socks along, although Tony was holding the cat right now, which seemed to have attached himself to Tony's shirt for fear of getting any of the water that might be on the beach on him.

Phoenix wasn't focused on the fact that Tony was all but flailing with her cat, or that she was really meeting her father-in-law for the first time. The only thing that she was focused on right now was the man waiting for her at the end of the aisle. She smiled up at him as she walked, reaching for him and holding his hand when she arrived.

The ceremony itself was rather brief, as, although they had brought in the efficient from Asgard (he had traveled along with Frigga and Odin), they had only wanted the more bare bones parts of the ceremony. They weren't performing for a crowd, after all, and Loki was only the second in line for the throne. They had less to worry about. Still, even by the end of it, Phoenix was starting to fidget on her feet.

Finally, the efficient said, "You may now kiss the bride," and Phoenix practically pounced on Loki, kissing him amid the cheers from the crowd.

"Alright, too much more of that and you guys are going to need to get a room!" Clint protested, and she pulled back from Loki with a laugh. It had taken a very long time, but Phoenix was finally feeling...happy.

(Author's Note: And that's the end! Not of their tale, but just this part. Figured I'd give a list of my future projects for you guys.

Wedding One-Shot - A much expanded one shot that will cover the wedding after part of Phoenix and Loki, which will include official introductions between Odin and Phoenix, part shenanigans, and one big surprise for everyone.

Untitled Loki/Darcy Fic - Post-Avengers. Thor comes back to Earth to start visiting Jane like he promised way back when, but he has a tag along. Apparently he has to keep Loki on a REALLY short leash. Darcy shares an apartment with Jane, and guess who gets to watch over Loki while Jane and Thor are spending 'quality time'? Darcy also gets to show off her smarts in political science and other humanities. This will LIKELY be the next fic to go up, unless I finish the wedding one shot first.

Untitled 'Redemption' Sequel - Will be set 2-3 years after Redemption. I don't have too much plotted out yet, which is why other stories will go up first, but I have decided on the basic plot. I just need to get down with my outlines and work it out. Loki and Phoenix's story was originally supposed to be a three story arc, but I came up with something good for a fourth one. A better summary will likely be attached to one of the two above stories as well.

There may be some other one-shots from the 'Second in Command' universe as well, filling in some blanks and whatnot. I was originally going to just write some things, but figured this would be a bit easier, plus I'll label where each one-shot should fit in the stories. I have also decided that my NaNoWriMo project this year will be Phoenix's backstory. I've dropped some hints about her past along the way in the stories, but I have so much more in my head and want to share it. It will go from her original waking up to her working with SHIELD.

I'm SO in love with you guys who have reviewed, favorited, and alerted on my stories. I hope you return in the future!)


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